Prior art lenticular systems suffer from one or two problems. Some lenticular image manufacturing processes produce images with the individual views being indistinct from each other. Other lenticular manufacturing processes provide images which show Moire patterns or other flickering effects especially when consecutive views have identical areas such as stationary areas in motion images. Such images may still provide views which are indistinct from each other. Thus, unfortunately, some prior art images showed both problems at the same time. In images using the present invention these problems are solved. The reason for this is that the views which are contained in lenticular images are typically formed from the interaction of as few as 3 and as many as 6 or more components. The first of these is the shape of the writing spot which writes the media.
However, even if the writing spot shape as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,781,225, issued Jul. 14, 1998, to Syracuse et al. entitled "Method and Apparatus for Improving Electronic Recording of Depth Images," approaches the ideal shape in practice; the ideal shape is not apparent to the viewer. Instead he sees images which suffer from the problem that views are indistinct from each other due to the degradation contributed by the other components, such as the degradation due to the limited resolution capabilities of the writing media and the limited resolution performance of the lenticular lens. Furthermore, if the lenticular image is made using a printing process or photographic film contact process, then these additional components will also further degrade the distinctiveness of views. Thus, in general, each of these components contribute to the degradation of the viewed images.
In prior art inventions the shape of the overall combined single view response was not considered when optimizing image quality. Nor were methods for customizing the overall combined single view response by modifying the response of the underlying components.
Previously in order to write lenticular images with a large number of views, using a digital or electronic writer, the size of the writing spot was modified so that the width of the writing spot met the resolution requirements imposed by the necessity of having multiple views behind each lenticule. However, except for the prior art already mentioned, attention has not been paid to spot shape or to the overall combined spot shape.
As stated, the combined overall spot shape is very important for producing high quality lenticular images. Although the size of the spot may be different, the shape of the spot in the direction across the lenticules can be defined by similar considerations to the shape of the spot in the direction along the lenticules. Thus, this specification will primarily discuss the spot shape across the lenticules, however the methodology described herein can be applied along the spot shaped lenticules.